Monday, October 1, 2012

a good book!

or more specifically...a banned book!

As a librarian and former teacher and a reader in general I have some rather strong opinions about censorship and book banning. While I don't think that every person should read every book (quite the opposite!) I do believe in the freedom to choose and to express ideas.

There is such a thing as an appropriate audience and particularly when it comes to something that is assigned there should be care taken to respect the beliefs and values of the community. But that doesn't mean that the books shouldn't be written or available. In fact, there is great value in expanding the views and understandings of our individual worlds and one of the best ways to do this is by reading. What might be seen as offensive and harmful to some might just be someone else's daily reality.

Over the course of history pretty much every book has been at least challenged if not banned out-right but it's always interesting to me to see which ones have and why.

In my mind it's just a tiny step from banning to burning, from censorship to mind control. (You've all read Fahrenheit 451, right? or 1984?) So, take a stand against The Man and read a banned book this week!

And you don't have to take my word for it!

"Without freedom of speech, there is no freedom."
--Bette Greene

"The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame." --Oscar Wilde

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." -- Harry S. Truman, message to Congress, August 8, 1950

"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings."-- Heinrich Heine"Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance."-- Lyndon Baines Johnson, February 11, 1964